|
''The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician'' is a memoir by Li Zhisui, one of the physicians to Mao Zedong, former Chairman of the Communist Party of China, which was first published in 1994. Li had emigrated to the United States in the years after Mao's death. The book describes the time during which Li was Mao's physician, beginning with his return to China after training in Australia, through the height of Mao's power to his death in 1976 including the diverse details of Mao's personality, sexual proclivities, party politics and personal habits. The authenticity of the accounts has been questioned by many people, including Professor Tai Hung-chao, who translated the book into English. Tai revealed that the publisher, Random House, put more sensationalist elements to the book than that which Li had provided them, despite Li's own protestations.〔 The book was well received by Western media, with reviews praising it for being corroborated by other sources and giving a detailed, fly on the wall perspective on Mao's personal life. The book was controversial and ultimately banned in the People's Republic of China, with other associates of Mao publishing Chinese language rebuttals in which they argued that much of it was fabricated by Li himself and by his English language translators. ==Background== In publicising ''The Private Life of Chairman Mao'', Li Zhisui stated that he was Mao's personal physician for twenty-two years, in which time he became a close confidant of the Chinese leader, although this has since come under criticism from those who do not agree that Li's relationship was as close to Mao as he maintains.〔Lin, Xu and Wu 1995.〕 Li based the book's contents upon his own memories of Mao several decades after the actual event, as he had burned all of his personal diaries during the Cultural Revolution. One of Li's collaborators who was involved in the editing of the work, the Western historian Anne F. Thurston, noted that memory is "fallible" and might "be wrong", but stated that Li's "judgments of Mao are essentially correct because so much of what he says conforms to the historical record" and that Chinese intellectuals "long suspected (book's ) more sensational contents".〔Thurston 1996.〕 The original manuscript written by Li was translated from his native Chinese into English by Professor Tai Hung-chao, before being edited by Thurston (whom Li later accused of cutting substantial parts of his original manuscript without his knowledge),〔Li 1996.〕 whilst the foreword to the book was written by Professor Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University.〔Gao 2008. p. 101.〕 Tai later commented that the English-language publisher, Random House, wanted more sensationalist elements to the book than that which Li had provided them, in particular requesting more information about Mao's sexual relationships. Despite Li's own protestations, they overruled him, and put such claims in the published text.〔Tai 2000.〕 Along with the Random House publication, the book was also released in the Chinese language by the Chinese Times Publishing Company of Tapei.〔Gao 2008. p. 99.〕 Despite its Chinese language publication, the book was banned by the government in the People's Republic of China, as have many works criticising Mao on a personal level, and they subsequently also publicly denounced both the book and a BBC documentary that used it as a basis.〔Gao 2008. p. 103.〕 Li himself was critical of the published Chinese language edition of the book, believing that it was not directly based upon his original Chinese manuscript, but that it was instead a translation based upon the English version.〔 Q.M. DeBorja and Xu L. Dong highlighted what they saw as a variety of discrepancies in the text between the published English and Chinese versions of ''The Private Life of Mao'', for instance, in the English edition, Li is recorded as saying "During our talk in Chengdu…" whereas in the Chinese edition, the literal translation is "Mao stated in his speech at the Chengdu meeting…"; as DeBorja and Dong note, these statements actually have different meanings.〔DeBorga and Dong 1996. p. 48.〕 Other such alterations to the Chinese version of the book included the removal of controversial statements about the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who was still alive and in power of the People's Republic at the time of publication.〔Gao 2008. p. 102.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Private Life of Chairman Mao」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|